Savage Streets

by William P. McGivern

  Her lips were dry but she willed herself not to moisten them. She said as easily as she could manage, “I’m expecting the children home shortly, so you’ll have to excuse me, I’m afraid.”

  Jerry was still looking at her legs, still smiling softly. “You know, Duke,” he said, “there’s things beside booze and TV shows that get a man all stirred up. Too much or not enough — it can cause problems.”

  “I know what you mean,” Duke said. “They’re called repressions. Get the cork in the bottle too tight, and wham!” He pounded a fist into his palm and the abrupt, metallic crack of flesh against flesh made Barbara start; she stepped backward quickly, almost tripping, and Jerry laughed and said, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Farrell. I’ll catch you if you fall.”

  “Get out of here!” she cried, and even in her fear she was humiliated at the entreaty in her voice. “Get out, get out, please.”

  “Sure, sure,” Duke said. He made a placating gesture with his hand. “There’s nothing to be upset about.”

  They had made her cringe, she realized; that was what they must have wanted. This was what they had done to Jimmy.

  “Get out of here,” she said bitterly, close to tears now. But she wasn’t frightened any more. “Get out,” she cried in sudden fury. “Get out.”

  “Come on, Jerry,” Duke said. “This is what you get for trying to help out these rich mixed-up people.” At the door he turned and looked at Barbara. “What you’re afraid of is in your head, not mine. And one other thing: if you call the cops what will you tell them? That we stopped by to see what your husband wanted to talk to us about? Come on, Jerry. Let’s drift.”

  When the door closed Barbara ran across the room and slipped the burglar chain into its metal runners. She leaned against the door then, breathing unevenly, listening to the rapid stroke of her heart. She resisted an impulse to run to the phone. She waited a full minute, getting control of herself. Then she walked across the room and called her husband’s office.

  Chapter Seven

  Ат seven o’clock that night Farrell pulled up and parked in front of the Chiefs’ clubhouse on Matt Street. He went down the short flight of stone steps and knocked on the door. From inside he heard music, a big hysterical trumpet weaving above an insistent drumbeat. Farrell knocked again, pounding on the door with his fist. A latch clicked and Enrique looked up at him. “All right, don’ break it down,” he said.

  Farrell pushed the door open with the flat of his hand. The room was filled with cigarette smoke, vibrating with the crash of music. In the rear Duke and Jerry were playing cards, the chips and silver gleaming on the green felt surface of the poker table. The winos were not in sight, but Cleo sat cross-legged on a bar stool behind Jerry. She wore thick white ankle socks with tiny bells sewn to them, and as she swung her foot the bells made a tiny sound under the strident jazz beat.

  Duke looked up as Farrell came toward him. He glanced without expression at Jerry and called to Enrique. “Turn down that music. We got company.”

  The music faded to a miniature squeal.

  Farrell stared down at their wise, expectant little smiles. They didn’t take this seriously, he knew; he represented nothing but a diversion to them, a prospect of fun to brighten a dull evening. His temper was dangerously short, but he hadn’t come here to indulge his temper. He pulled an empty chair to the table and sat down. In the silence the little bells on Cleo’s socks sounded clearly, insistently.

  Farrell said drily, “Who’s the big winner?”

  Duke laughed and the sound of it was a dismissal of banalities. “The big brother bit, eh? One of the boys. You sound like a guy we know. Father Martin from St. Ann’s. Ain’t that right, Jerry?”

  Jerry nodded, watching Farrell with a little grin. “That’s right, Duke. Father Martin always asks who’s the big winner. He hands around cigarettes and talks about baseball. He even kids us about girls.”

  Duke pushed a poker chip around in a circle. “He wants to understand us,” he said drily. “He wants to be a buddy.”

  “He’s the swinging end,” Jerry said. “Sixty years old, bald as an egg, and he wants to be a buddy. Always pitching up gags and wisecracks. He don’t act like a priest at all.”

  “So we don’t treat him like one,” Duke said, a flick of contempt in his voice. “That’s fair enough, isn’t it?” He stared with bitter challenge at Farrell, the overhead light shadowing his lean arrogant features. “So let’s cut the buddy-buddy crap. What do you want?”

  “I want you to keep far away from me,” Farrell said slowly and deliberately. “Away from my kids, away from my home. Is that clear enough?”

  “I could say the same thing to you,” Duke said, and blew a lazy stream of smoke toward the electric light bulb hanging above the table. “Why don’t you stay away from me? What did you learn from talking to my old man, by the way? Did he give you a lot of jazz about the good old days on the railroad? Did that help you understand me?”

  “You think I want to understand you?” Farrell said quietly.

  “Then you stopped in here,” Duke went on, his voice sharpening. “You met Cleo. And Enrique. And my drunken pets. Did that explain why I’m all mixed up? Why I’m a no-good bum?” The light flickered in his dark eyes. “Why I’m a delinquent slob going to hell in a hand-basket?”

  Farrell put his hands flat on the table. “Now get this straight,” he said, glancing from Duke to Jerry. “I don’t give one good goddamn about understanding either of you. You think you’re interesting. Problem kids. Someone everybody is concerned about helping and straightening out. Well, you’re not interesting to me. Go to hell in a hand-basket if you want to, it’s not my affair. But let me tell you one thing: there’s nothing spectacular about you. You’re going to get older and make a living washing cars or running a freight elevator or sweeping out basements. And you’ll bore hell out of everybody whining how you never got any breaks. You might have got through college on football. That’s how I made it. But if you’re too dumb and lazy to give it a whirl, that’s fine with me. Do whatever the hell you want. I don’t see you as a national waste. Or as valuable raw material that’s being neglected. In my book...”

  Duke yawned elaborately and said, “Let’s play cards, eh?” He grinned at Jerry. “The radio seemed awful loud for a while, didn’t it?”

  “A guy could hardly think,” Jerry said.

  Farrell stood up and slapped the cards from the table. The two boys stared at him, caught and held by the anger in his face, and Farrell said softly, “In my book you’re gutless bums. You hounded my son into stealing, you broke into my house to scare my wife. You’re great with women and kids, aren’t you? With a gang at your back.”

  Cleo said anxiously, “They didn’t mean...” but Duke cut her off with a quick, furious glance. Jerry was watching Duke like a dog awaiting commands, alert but uncertain; he was rubbing his big hands together, a frown clouding his broad features. Duke turned to Farrell and started to speak; but he changed his mind and his eyes slid away from the anger in Farrell’s face. He began to move poker chips about in a nervous circle. “All right, you made a deal,” he said, in a high, bitter voice. He suddenly met Farrell’s eyes. “But you’re part of a gang too, you and your big-shot friends, the Faircrest Squares, that’s who you are. You fight together and stick together the same as we do. But that’s fine. Nobody blames you for it. Something you don’t like, you get up a committee and get the cops to fix it for you.” He stood up and leaned toward Farrell. “All right, you heard me,” he yelled. “It’s a deal.”

  Farrell stared at him and said nothing. He waited until the anger drained from Duke’s face. He waited as the silence stretched out tightly between them, waited until Duke finally looked down at the table and ran a hand across his forehead. Then Farrell said: “It’s a deal. Don’t forget it,” and walked toward the door. Enrique turned up the record player and as Farrell went up the stone steps to the street he could hear the blast of the music behind him, the hard jazz pushing angr
ily at his back.

  There was a pleasurable stir of excitement in Farrell’s office the following morning. Weinberg’s thinking on Atlas refrigerators had struck a spark of interest from the client. The idea had been pitched up in a casual-seeming memo which had been chiseled out with great care by Sam Mellon, the agency’s copy chief — a memo suggesting merely that the idea was worth exploring. The advertising director at Atlas had agreed, and the wheels were turning. There were prospects of additional billing, and the smell of money mingled inevitably with the aroma of sour grapes.

  Farrell lunched with a copywriter named Rawlings.

  “The kitchen, the heart of the home,” Rawlings said, shaking his head. He lit a cigarette and tasted his Martini. “Why didn’t we think of that? I guess it’s biological illiteracy on my part. I always figured the heart of the home for a more central spot. Around the second floor, maybe. Definitely above the first floor, at any rate.” Rawlings was short and sturdy with pink cheeks and a tic which gave him the look of a worried confidence man. “What’s the matter? You seem low.”

  “Seasonal decline, I suppose. Moulting.” Farrell tried to get his mind off his own problems. “Well, where do you imagine the kidneys of a home would be? In the bar, eh?”

  “Hey!” Rawlings said. “This marches bien. Weinberg didn’t see the potential. We can use his idea on damn near any account. Where’s the stomach of the home? The basement, eh? Keep your canned goods there, naturally. And the roof? It’s your home’s poor old bald head. Put a toupee on it by reshingling.”

  “Well, he’s got a good idea,” Farrell said.

  “That’s why I’m mad, for Christ’s sake. Let’s have another drink and face the fact we re not really creative.”

  There was a plans session at four and Colby, the supervisor on Atlas, asked Farrell to sit in. He had little to do but listen and make an occasional note. Weinberg was near the head of the long table, tense and stimulated by success, amplifying his concept for the benefit of several people from the client’s advertising staff. Layouts and photographs were passed around and Farrell found himself looking at a glossy picture of a colonial kitchen. In the middle of the clean, old pine floor stood a tall Atlas refrigerator, its doors open to display an immense assortment of plastic containers and stacks of packaged vegetables and meats. A mother was looking into the icebox. She was smiling, a hand on her hip, one foot cocked back on a spiky heel. Slim and pretty in a flaring skirt and cocktail apron, she was considering the array of food and drink crammed into the shelves and storage compartments of the refrigerator.

  On the right a father relaxed in a pine rocker before a great stone fireplace. He was pointing a pipe at another dad, and a boy sat between them dreaming into the fire. A couple stood apart from this group with drinks in their hands, smiles on their faces. They were admiring an antique coffee-grinder on the mantelpiece.

  Farrell said it was effective and passed it along. He lit another cigarette. The room was crowded and noisy, swirling with smoke. He rested his eyes briefly by looking out at the fine span of bridge he could see through the wide clean windows.

  Weinberg was talking about oral satisfactions: breast feeding, kissing, drinking, eating, tying them all into the heart-of-the-home theme. At one point he said: “You could argue — using a pretty long bow, I’ll admit — that the kitchen is really the sexiest room in the house.” He mentioned Ceres and grain and fertility, and something about Egypt which Farrell didn’t catch.

  The picture took shape, and it was a pleasant one. Smiling, substantial people, the men in tweeds, the women in toreador pants and ballet slippers, congregating for the essentials of life in the heart of the home — in large, tile- or brick-floored kitchens, with firelight and drinks to soften and mellow their moods. And close at hand, Farrell thought, was the icebox full of eternal verities, the steaks and cold beer.

  Someone made the point that the campaign might tie in effectively with summer living patterns. The beach cottage, the cabin at the lake or mountains, this was stripped-down living, clean and functional. People came back from sailing or swimming or golf wanting the basics of life — food and drink. “Which they get...” it was Rawlings speaking, Farrell noticed with some amusement, “in perfect condition from the jet-cooled Atlas, the Iceberg of Refrigerators — nine-tenths of your food is out of sight.” Rawlings intoned the company’s slogan earnestly, but the tic in his eye made it appear as if he might be winking at the whole idea.

  Farrell’s thoughts drifted as he looked at the graceful webbing of the bridge. Duke had said last night that the people in Faircrest were a gang — sticking together, fighting together, dangerous. It had seemed a twisted rationalization to Farrell. Still — where would Duke and his pals fit into the scenes that were being dreamed up in a session like this? Would they fit in at all? The cute people in these layouts and photographs were damn well organized; they had entrance requirements, taboos, special values, the blackball. The crowd on the veranda with the tall, cool drinks, the clean-limbed people on water-skis, the sailors and golfers and clubmen, the plump old rogue who knew brandy and the woman who loved nice things — they were a gang all right! And they wouldn’t want Duke around, Farrell decided; not until he made some dough, at any rate. But there was nothing wrong with that. The world didn’t owe Duke yachts and convertibles. He had to get out and scratch for them. That was the system. But how about Enrique? Would money get him into the classy gangs? Probably not. Even if he cornered the switchblade concession in Central Park and made a million bucks. It was chic to be southern, but only up to a point.

  The trouble was, Farrell thought, there were a hell of a lot of Dukes and Enriques around who would probably never get into the big, beautiful gangs they saw living it up in the magazine ads and TV commercials. It was just possible that there were more Dukes and Enriques than there were brandy-bibbers and backyard chefs and mothers looking cutely into stuffed iceboxes.

  The telephone beside Colby rang and a secretary picked it up quickly, hushed and discreet in the great cave of the winds. She glanced down at Farrell. “It’s for you, Mr. Farrell. It’s a Lieutenant Jameson.”

  “I’ll take it in my office,” Farrell said. “Excuse me.”

  Colby said, “If you want, take it in here. Maybe you can keep half an ear on what’s going on.”

  “All right then,” Farrell said. There was a small cold knot in his stomach. The phone was on a long extension cord and he carried it to a sofa a dozen feet from the conference table. “This is Farrell,” he said, fumbling for his cigarettes. Everyone in the room was talking again and he raised his voice and said: “What’s up, Lieutenant?”

  “Sorry to bother you at work, Mr. Farrell.”

  “That’s all right. What’s the matter?”

  The lieutenant’s voice was dry and hard. “One of the boys who belong to the Chiefs got worked over pretty thoroughly last night — early this morning rather. Does this come as a complete surprise to you?”

  “Of course it does. What do you mean by that crack?”

  “Slow down. I’m not suggesting you’re involved. What I meant was this: have you heard any of your friends talking about this sort of thing?”

  Farrell hesitated. “There’s been talk, sure. That’s a normal reaction.”

  “And you’re sure this talk was just talk?”

  “Hell no, I’m not sure,” Farrell said, with a touch of anger. “I’m surmising. But why did you call me about this matter?”

  “That’s a fair question,” Jameson said, and Farrell sensed a weariness in his voice. “Perhaps because you struck me as a sensible sort of person. A little less volatile, say, than your friend Detweiller. At any rate, let’s not flare up at each other. We’ve got a problem, and the important thing is to solve it.” He paused. “Am I cutting into your work?”

  “No, that’s all right.” Someone at the conference table was telling a joke. “Go right ahead.”

  “This boy was beaten up by two grown men. They caught him in an al
ley near Matt Street and asked him if he belonged to the Chiefs. He said yes. One held him, and the other did the knuckle work. The man who runs the candy store near the Chiefs’ clubhouse heard the talk this morning and passed it along to the beat cop. We picked the boy up but he stuck to the typical B-movie hoodlum attitude and refused to talk, except to say he couldn’t identify the men, and had no idea why they’d singled him out for a shellacking. I rounded up as many of the Chiefs as I could find, but they clammed up, too. I learned, however, that you’d been to see Duke’s father, and that you’d been to the Chiefs’ clubhouse a couple of times. Mind if I ask why?”

  “Of course not,” Farrell said. The little knot in his stomach was colder. He had done nothing wrong but as he mashed out his cigarette he realized his hand was trembling slightly. “I thought I might talk some sense into their heads. It seemed to me the situation was getting pretty explosive.”

  “Were you worried about your friends doing something reckless?”

  “Well, not exactly.” Farrell wasn’t telling the truth, and he was aware of a lack of conviction in his voice. The lieutenant must have noticed it also, for he said, “Not exactly, eh? But something was worrying you, is that it?”

  “Now listen: I’m sorry some boy got knocked around, but I don’t know a damn thing about it.”

  “Very well.” The lieutenant hesitated. “Look, Mr. Farrell, if you find out anything about it, will you let me know?”

  “Yes, of course I will.”

  “I hope you mean that. And I think you do. About the worst thing that could happen right now, and I’m not thinking only about Hayrack, I mean this generally, is for any adult or group of adults to think they can by-pass the cops on this problem of juvenile delinquency. Delinquent, by the way, is a word I don’t think much of. I’d rather say hoodlum or deadbeat or bully. Anyway, that’s beside the point. The thing is, as much as the average citizen might feel like wringing these kids’ necks, it’s not their job, it’s police work. You spread that word and you might be doing your friends a favor.”